


Midnight Showing

by GutterBall



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Cussing, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2015-03-20
Packaged: 2018-03-18 17:47:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3578388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GutterBall/pseuds/GutterBall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's finally taking a few days' break from his search for Bucky when Nick Fury sends him a certain video that changes everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight Showing

**Author's Note:**

> Someone on tumblr mourned that scene in the HYDRA/Strike van where Steve is so upset that Bucky looked right at him and didn't even know him. They pointed out that, because the Winter Soldier was wiped right after the bridge shootout, Steve would never know that Bucky HAD recognized him, that it had been important enough to even quietly argue about.
> 
> I couldn't help myself. I had to right that grievous wrong. I also have the feeling Nick Fury wouldn't keep something like this from Steve ever again, even if he wasn't sure if it would help or hurt. Call it a hunch.

For the first time in what felt like months, Steve sat down. He was, quite simply, exhausted. Mind, body, and spirit cried out in a cacophony for rest, and finally, he listened. The hotel couch felt comfortable, but he couldn't be sure if it actually was or if his weary body was just that grateful for its cushioned embrace. Either way, he slumped and leaned his head back, his knees splayed and his arms sprawled out.

He couldn't find Bucky. Oh, he found traces. Plenty of traces. In fact, his oldest friend's absence might actually be easier to bear if he found no sign of him whatsoever. All the little clues -- burned out HYDRA posts, pillaged safe houses, interrupted data trails that spoke of skilled, surgical information purges -- made him fear, deep down where he didn't like to look, that Bucky didn't _want_ to be found.

At least, not by Steve.

Worse, every day, he saw the toll the search was taking on Sam. Sam, who never complained. Sam, who knew this whole self-assigned mission was futile but kept it to himself. Sam, who'd never been shot up with superhuman serum and was very quickly winding down. Sam, whose spirit was entirely willing, but whose flesh needed a break.

Well, he could do that, at least. He'd booked their side-by-side rooms for three days, and he planned on letting Sam sleep for at least two of them. He could do that for this new friend who hadn't hesitated to jump into a crazy new world of villains and superheroes, just because Captain America needed his help.

He slumped further, giving in to his body's aching need for sleep, and just as his breathing slowed and true relaxation crept over him, his phone buzzed on the coffee table.

Of course.

More tired now than when he first sat down, he heaved himself forward and answered without picking it up. "What?"

"Hello to you, too, Cap."

Sighing, he rested his elbow on his knee and his cheek on his fist. "Sorry, Nick. It's... been a long day."

"I hear that. Look, I'm gonna get right to the point here, because we're both damn tired. I found something I think you need to see."

Eyes still closed, he grunted. "And it can't wait?"

"I don't even know if you'll wanna see it, Cap. I just... this isn't something I'm comfortable compartmentalizing."

 _That_ got his attention. He blinked his eyes open and sat up straight. The pint-sized Nick Fury on his cell screen nodded with that "yeah, I toldja so" look on his face.

"Don't say I never gave you anything."

And with that, Fury hung up. Not even a second later, his phone buzzed with an incoming text with a video attachment. The tag was an incomprehensible jumble of numbers, letters, and symbols. They probably meant something. He could probably figure it out after a few hours' sleep.

He was stalling.

Hands shaking, he tapped the attachment and felt his stomach drop through the floor when he realized the tiny figure perched tensely on the edge of a demented dentist's torture chair was Bucky. Or, more accurately, the Winter Soldier.

His finger shot out and paused the video before it could go any further, and he stood on legs that felt carved out of stone to stumble over to his bag and pull out his laptop. Half of him knew that he wouldn't be able to unsee whatever Fury had sent him. The other half did not care an iota and twitched to get his laptop up and running, faster faster faster.

This version of the Winter Soldier was large enough to see the depth of the thousand yard stare as techs worked on the metal arm. Was this... it couldn't be current. Bucky had spent the past three weeks burning HYDRA to the ground. He wouldn't go back to them, even for maintenance. It had to be an old--

The thousand yard stare shifted to a look of pure malice, and one of the techs went flying. The metal arm flexed as several guns leveled on him. The whole body flexed, glistening with sweat and pumped with adrenaline for the fight.

But no fight happened. The Soldier just... sat there. Thrumming with barely-contained violence, but still sitting there obediently enough.

Steve's already-dropped stomach froze over.

After what seemed like an eternity, a commotion off-camera drew some of the guards' attention, though the guns stayed on the Soldier until someone waved them off. All Steve could see was the back of a head--

"Mission report."

Pierce. This was... the techs were fixing the damage from... oh, Buck. This was just after the--

"Mission report. _Now_."

The Soldier just sat there, staring into the middle distance. No violence, now. No thrumming danger. Just... everything turned inward.

Pierce bent down in the Soldier's eyeline for a moment, then delivered a vicious backhand that rocked Bucky's head around and brought Steve up off the couch, fists and jaw clenched, half-ready to dig that son of a bitch up just to kill him aga--

"The man on the bridge...."

His heart lodged in his throat, where it throbbed frantically for release.

"Who was he?"

His knees deserted him, and the couch's cushions embraced him again. Everything inside him was static.

"You met him earlier this week on another assignment."

Pierce, you lying son of a--

"I knew him."

Up and down stopped meaning anything, and for a moment, Steve Rogers thought he'd passed out. He'd thought... when he told Nat and Sam who....

As if from a distance, he heard the ghost-echo of his own voice whispering, _He looked right at me, and he didn't even know me._

Ah, Buck....

He barely heard as Pierce apparently emptied an entire bucket of melted butter over the Winter Soldier's head. Did that sanctimonious bastard have to do this every time he sent the Soldier to kill? Did he have to appeal to the nobler side that was still Bucky to get the assassin to do his job? Oh, God, could enough of James Buchanan Barnes have remained all this time to require--

"But I knew him."

That look. That awful... no. That _fucking look_. Bucky knew what he was saying. He knew he was breaking some rule, arguing where he'd long been trained not to argue. But....

_But I knew him._

Everything hurt. He half-wished he could go back a few minutes in time to where everything was static and numb because right now, everything inside him felt pulled apart and scalded. He knew what would happen.

And oh, horror of horrors....

"Then wipe him and start over."

Oh, God, _THAT_ fucking look, because Bucky knew _exactly_ what would happen, that was no dentist's chair, not with clamps to hold him down and not with those things hovering malevolently over the top of it and the tech was putting a rubber bite guard in his mouth and _turn it off, Steve, for God's sweet merciful sake turn it off you don't want to see this--_

The screaming. Dear God, he would hear that scream in his dreams for the rest of his life, and death was too good for a monster like Alexander Pierce and for any of those cowardly curs who just stood there and watched as a human being, as a hero, as the best man Steve had ever had the privilege to know was stripped of everything that made him a human, that made him a hero, that made him Bucky Barnes.

His friend _had_ recognized him. And HYDRA had taken that brief moment away and replaced it with agony.

_But I knew him._

His head in his hands when the video finally, mercifully stopped, he remembered every second of his fight with the Winter Soldier on the helicarrier. God, the Soldier had _punished_ him, probably not even knowing why. The Soldier had resisted every entreaty, every plea for him to remember, and was it any wonder? Had some ghost of the agony of that wipe lingered? Of the reason for that agony?

_But I knew him._

A shuddery, watery sigh shivered out of him, and he swallowed down a lifetime of regret and misery and sorrow that threatened to vomit out of him in screams to match Bucky's from the video. From the Chair.

He'd read the file Nat had given him so many times he could recite it like a play, but as horrifying as reading about all the experiments and torture and brainwashing had been, nothing in the file could have prepared him for that video. For the... the nakedness of it. The visceral, gut-wrenching agony of it. Of watching--

Shoving up off the couch, he paced around his hotel room, almost running. His body sang with adrenaline, with the urge to fight, to destroy, to... to _repay_.

But Pierce was already dead, the Triskelion in a heap, the helicarriers in pieces up and down the Potomac, HYDRA scattered to the winds. Bucky was already wreaking his vengeance on his tormentors and clearly had better methods of seeking them out than even Nick Fury did.

What could he do? He wasn't used to feeling helpless. It had been a damn long time since Captain America couldn't protect someone he cared about.

And what if he _did_ find Bucky? What exactly did he plan on doing? His whole reason for this mad trek across the world had been to convince his old friend to come back home, to try to... recuperate, somehow. Sam could help with that, he knew. Sam even _wanted_ to help with that.

But... what right did he have to ask anything of Bucky now? Even for his own good? Could anything be for Bucky's good when he was punishing those who had pulled out everything that had made him Bucky Barnes in the first place?

James Buchanan Barnes deserved his vengeance. This path of destruction and retribution was... righteous.

If Steve tried to turn him from his current path, he would be denying him that right. Denying his friend a chance to right the wrongs done to him and prevent them ever being done to anyone else.

He just... couldn't. No, he _wouldn't_.

Bucky deserved his vengeance.

Half an hour later, he knocked on Sam's door, bag in hand and the beginning of a smile on his face. After a few moments and the sounds of muffled yawning and shuffling feet, Sam answered the door while dragging a hand over his face.

"...Steve? Hey, man, I thought we were--"

"Can you be ready to go in ten minutes?"

The beginning of a smile turned into a real one at the slump of broad shoulders and the look of resignation on Sam's weary, sleep-haggard face.

"Sure. Sure, man. I'm guessing Nat sent you someth--"

"We're going home."

Sam stared, wide-eyed and jaw-dropped.

"C'mon, you can sleep in the car. I'm driving."

He gave his friend a gentle shove to get him going, then strolled down the hallway toward the elevators with a little more energy in his step than when he'd walked this same hallway several hours before. He'd been weighted down with the burden of guilt and frustration and helplessness then.

Now, he just felt a certain impatience to be gone.

He'd never considered himself an eloquent man, though he apparently had a knack for making inspiring speeches on the fly. But as he settled into the driver's seat and adjusted the seat back and mirrors to his liking, he thought of the note he'd left for Bucky with a certain amount of pride. He had no doubt Buck knew all along that Steve was tracking him; how else had he stayed so far ahead this whole time?

Yes. Bucky would find the note when he realized Steve had left off the trail. And Steve was pretty sure he'd even read it.

>   
>  _Hey._
> 
> _I want to call you Bucky, but I'm not sure that's who you want to be now. I don't want to call you the Winter Soldier, but I will, if that's what you want._
> 
> _Whoever you are, I have a better idea what you're doing now and maybe a better idea than I can_ _live with for why you're doing it. I won't stand in your way. I never meant to, you know. I only_ _wanted to help._
> 
> _So... when you're finished, you know where I'll be. You'll always be welcome where I am, no matter who you are. And if you need help, just say the word._
> 
> _Either way, I'll be waiting._
> 
> _-Steve_

 

For now, it was all he could do, but... it felt right. Bucky had his mission. All Steve could do now was be there for him at the end of it.

That's what friends were for.

THE END


End file.
